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New Dawn Share Proposal Gets the Nod

by Staff reporter
14 Mar 2012 at 15:01hrs | Views
ZIMBABWE-FOCUSED gold producer New Dawn Mining Corporation's shareholders have agreed to make a number of changes in respect of its share trading. The Toronto Exchange-listed company recently held a shareholders meeting in which they approved to reduce the stated capital of the common shares of the company and increase the maximum number of shares issuable pursuant to the company's Stock Option Plan.

They also amended the Articles of Association of the company to create an unlimited number of a new class of special shares (that are issuable in series).

Interestingly, the development comes at a time when the company is gearing up to comply with Zimbabwe's indigenisation law.

In August last year, New Dawn signed a confidential Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment which established a broad-based framework for the company's compliance.

Following the signing of the MoU, a valuation firm was appointed by the National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Board to carry out the process and the resultant valuation report was completed and submitted to the NIEEB in early November.

On the basis of the valuation report, New Dawn made revisions to its plan and met with ministry officials at the beginning of this year.

New Dawn says it is still waiting on official communication from the relevant authorities.

New Dawn earlier indicated that its indigenisation compliance plans may include employee and community share ownership schemes, disposal of equity to identified indigenous

Zimbabweans as well as listing on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange.

The company has also hinted that it will use its indigenisation compliance plan to raise funds to implement its current business plans, indicating a significant bias towards equity disposal.

In terms of the indigenisation regulations, the value of the shares to be transferred to a designated entity (the buyer) will be calculated on the basis of a valuation agreed by the Ministry of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment and the mining firm.

"Subject to successful acceptance by the Government of Zimbabwe and implementation of New Dawn's Plan (as may be modified by mutual agreement), the company believes it would then have the additional working capital resources necessary to support its efforts to increase gold production to 100 000oz of gold on an annualised basis by the end of

2014," said the company in an earlier trading update.

The company is targeting to ramp up production to between 50 000 to 60 000 ounces of gold this year from 40 000 ounces last year, and further targets 100 000 ounces by the end of 2014. New Dawn owns the Turk/Angelus Mine Complex, the Old Nic Mine and the Camperdown Project.

The company also has an approximately 85 percent equity interest in Dalny, Golden Quarry and Venice mines and a large portfolio of prospective exploration acreage in the country. Four of these mines are presently operational, and the company is in the process of expanding production at these sites.

Source - herald